Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 12:23:46 +0000 From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk Subject: Re: virtual social structures Thanks, for the clarifications on the use of the term 'virtual'. I agree however, with I.P. Wright when he says: >I don't see how one can distinguish between `virtual' and `real' structures. Social structures are real: emergent properties of society. In this respect the term 'virtual', as Heikki seems to be using it, applies to unobservable 'things' and as far as we can tell (given the present state of knowledge) aren't all social structures in principle unoberservable. Their effects, however, as Doug's Gutemala example demonstrate, are not. Hence, and given a causal criterion for the ascription of reality, why say structures are 'virtual' not 'real'? Of course, there might be another use, perhaps of the form "in the absence of the head of the Finnish Insitute of International Affairs, Heikki is the 'virtual' head" (Hope you like this Heikki). I would be happy with this reading, but wonder whether Heikki would agree? it may be one way to resolve the matter to some sort of mutual satisfaction. The problem of course, is that it does raise the issue of levels again since the virtual head - Heikki - 'may not' be causally efficacious in some of the output of the Finnish Institute and any explanation of tha output would require recourse to some entity/level - the real head - which is. (actually, I realised as I've written this there is one big flaw which tends to somewhat undercut my argument, but for the sake of debate I will post it nontheless) Now in this respect I find Heikki's account of a social system deficient in one crucial area - that of 'unacknowledged conditions': conditions that is that are structurally influenced. And this is why 'unemployment' can be seen to be BOTH a cause and an outcome in certain social situations. Moreover, given the amount of time Bhaskar devoted in PON to the rejection of precisely the view of structures "causally powerful wholes", why treat them as such? > >It is very interesting that critical realism can be used to defend >some of the fundamental ideas of modern political theory. But this is to be expected, I don't think that critical realism can be tied to any one political outlook or any scientific or social-scientific theory. Anymore than you can say positivism necessarily leads to Fascism (although many postmodernists do seem to want to say precisely this insofar as they equate positivism with a modernist form of rationality/enlightenment). It is precisely this point which makes Suchting's critique of Bhaskar, that is, that his philosophy allows him to pull a socialist rabbit out of the hat, is so facile. > It is my argument that there is no such "mechanism" as >'balance of power' or 'invisible hand'. There are unintended conse- >quences of multiple, socially conditioned actions and there is >interdependence of these actions, but they are not mechanical >at all (to Colin: why use the term 'mechanism' if the intention is >not to say that the production of effects is 'mechanical' at least >in some sense of the term?; and is not the term 'machine' at the >origin of both terms?). Bur Heikki, surely you would allow that the 'balance-of-power' or a belief in its existence affects the beliefs of policymakers, hence it has real effects. Even if it is only through the production of 'unacknowkledged conditions'. Critical realism, however, would clearly be unhappy with any explanation which dealt only with this surface level and would want to explain the beliefs (perhaps, the structural causal factors that is) in the 'balance-of-power', the unintended consequences the events that such a belief might produce and the new unacknowledged condition of action (the structural elaboration, as Archer might put it) and the conditions of possibilty for the belief, at a bare minimum. Moreover, you account of the etymology of the term 'mechanism', in my opinion, neglects the application of the TMSA to linguistic terms in common usage. Given Bhaskar's account of knowledge production, that is the use of antecedant materials, it's hardly surprising that he would use terms to describe his account that were commononly used. However, and given the fact that knowledge and lingustic terms are also ameanable to transformation, we have to see Bhaskar's use of the term mechanism as an attempt to transform its use. In RTS Bhaskar rejects regularity determinism ( a mechanistic concept, events of type A will always be followed by events of type B) but accepts ubiquity determinism (all events have a cause). In this respect his use of the term mechanism I admit might retrospectively be regretted, and I think Heikki has a point. But more importantly, given a Bhaskarian account of causality there is no way the term mechanism can be interpreted mechanistically, whatever its origins. I.P. Wright agin raises the issue of straification being central to any critical realist ontology: >I thought that one of Bhaskar's more obvious contributions >was to show the fallacy of ontological `flatness'. Many >ontological levels supervene on social relations, >including emergent mechanisms, processes and things. > I think, in fairness to all the contributors in this exchange, we would all agree with this. The point of difference seems to be where to locate the depth. Doug puts it this way: >Hans's interpretation 5 is exactly the interpretation of structure >I would favor: structures are real, distinct from agency, but not on a >different level. I somehow missed Hans interpretation. One major issue that occurs to me here is the difference between whether Bhaskar's 'account' (in the transitive) dimension) and the issue of the intransitive status of the agent-structure relationship. I think we have to take seriously the possibility that Bhaskar could be arguing for a conceptuatlisation of the relationship which is 'wrong'. But this is a different matter from whether Bhaskar's theory demands that they be seen on diff levels. One question that arises is whether strata are different from levels? And in this respect I quote from Collier p.147. "We are concerned here with two distinct strata, though mutually ontologically dependent ones. This is a real ontological difference: people are not relations, societies not conscious agents. Different strata are characterised by different kinds of mechanisms." I think I want to reiterate that I don't have this issue settled in my own mind. I can see good reasons for seeing them on diff levels and good reasons for not. One point Collier does raise though, in the above quote, is the criteria that might legitimate talk of levels (I am taking it as given that strata=levels). For me one criteria is if an entity has emergent properties. But also, in terms of the agent-structure problem, I am very wary of treating them on the same level but because it is exactly this fault which the Berger and Luckmann model suffers from. However, given my present state of confusion this could all change in 6 months time. Thanks, Colin -------------------------------------------------------- Colin Wight Department of International Politics University of Wales, Aberystwyth Aberystwyth SY23 3DA -------------------------------------------------------- ------------------
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